European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley says there’s no guarantees that a proposed European Tour restart will go ahead as planned in July.
There was finally good news for Europe’s main Tour when Pelley revealed light at the end of the tunnel this week with news that the Betfred British Masters would be the first of six tournaments as part of a UK swing.
However, he has warned that their revised 2020 schedule depends on UK Government restrictions being lifted, and considering the chaos going on in the UK at the moment, there’s not much reason to be optimistic.
Covid-19 remains rampant in the UK. Hotels are still closed and a two-week quarantine for those entering from outside the UK makes things no easier, while whatever lockdown is supposed to be happening in the meantime seems to have been disregarded by a chunk of the population this weekend.
If it were only themselves affected I’d say it was a case of natural selection for those heading to Durdle Door! But it’s not.Likely anyone fit & healthy enough to sit on a packed beach won’t be ones dying in a few weeks of the virus.God help us.Still highest death rate in Europe pic.twitter.com/mwxRXYn3ay
— Jason Manford (@JasonManford) May 30, 2020
Pelley’s under no illusions that the Tour has a long way to go in order to resume but he remains optimistic it can.
“These events will all be behind closed doors and are all predicated on government approval, including the hotels being operational and the current quarantine situation in the UK being lifted,” Pelley said.
“All our events and all events in sport universally are predicated on government restrictions, government regulations and following the WHO guidelines. We have informed the UK government, we have talked to them almost daily now.
“We have submitted our health strategy to them and we have said to them, obviously, the hotels need to be operational and the quarantine needs to be lifted for us to be able to continue with these events.
“Our position has been to the government that lifting the quarantine is going to be critical for us to have a successful tournament. I’m certainly encouraged and I’m certainly optimistic. We wouldn’t be announcing these events without having had significant dialogue with the UK government.
Leave a comment